1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image tone conversion apparatus, recording medium, and system.
2. Description of the Related Art
A technique for converting an image to a painting-like image has been known. As such kind of technique, for example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. H8-44867 discloses a technique for converting an original image to an oil-painting-like picture by correcting each portion of the original image to have more uniform brightness, color saturation, and hue to represent a so-called brush stroke, or by detecting contrast edges of the original image and correcting brightness along the detected contrast edges to emphasize contour lines.
When performing an image tone conversion such as conversion from a desired region of an original image to a painting-like image, first of all, the desired region is trimmed and cut out from the original image. Then, the image tone conversion is performed to the trimmed and cutout region of the image in accordance with an image tone selected among various kinds of image tones (water color painting, oil painting (impressionist school), oil painting (fauve), Gouache painting, and pastel painting). However, if such image to which the image tone conversion is performed is not what is intended by a user, the user has to do the conversion process all over again, which forces the user to do extremely complicated work. In other words, there is a problem that it is impossible to easily convert the desired region of the original image to various kinds of image tones without trimming the image.